ET BureauMullenLowe Group’s global chief Alex Leikikh should know. Since its holding company IPG tried twice to make a dent in the US market with Lowe but it failed. In India, however, Lowe is a creative powerhouse.
It is not often that a global CEO of a communication group confesses to their Indian operations being comparable to their US operation on most parameters. That is exactly what Alex Leikikh, worldwide CEO of MullenLowe Group (MLG) shared with Brand Equity on his maiden trip to India recently. The new entity was created nearly an year back after Lowe and Partners network aligned with the US agency, Mullen.
Leikikh shares his plans for the group as he goes about fusing the two different cultures of the Boston-born independent agency with the British origin Lowe.
New York has been the birthplace for a large part of American advertising. In such a scenario being an agency born in Boston, a city more known for its universities and financial clout than creativity, must have posed some unique challenges for the Mullen brand?
Mullen was born in northern suburbs of Boston, in Wenham MA in 1970. In the early days, the joke was that the agency has to be extra special to be able to convince a client to not just travel out of New York, take a 30 minutes flight, and then take a 40-minute drive into the woods to reach our then office. The company grew against all odds. The challenges of the location did give the agency a scrappy street
fighter mentality.
Mullen with its unique independent agency culture and Lowe with its British legacy. What was the genesis of melting the two disparate brands together?
Practically, Mullen had a lot of clients in the US that needed representation outside. Equally Lowe while a big agency in UK, India and other parts never got a foothold in the US, which is not unusual since most UK-based agencies for some reasons have never made it quite big in the US market. It is well documented that IPG has tried it twice earlier too - to take Lowe outside without much success. This is the third time.
India is a unique market for MLG, in that it has two standalone agency brands– the iconic Lowe Lintas and the newer offshoot Mullen Lowe. Why have two brands?
The reason for having two brands here is because unlike US this market has a long tail of clients. It does not have 3-4 massive clients delivering 10-15 million dollars of revenue each contributing to the business. In such a situation we need the second brand to deal with the conflicts that may arise.
Recently the high-profile R Balki group chairman Mullen Lowe Lintas decided to quit after a long stint as the face of the brand in India. What has been the impact on the business?
There are a number of ways of measuring – whether the clients remained stable before, during and after the announcement, do we believe in our talent’s ability to deliver, are we getting inbound calls to participate in business and creative reviews. Answer to all these is yes. We have not felt the downside of Balki’s going and that has also to do with the talent that has been developed at the group. We are obviously
monitoring it - if George Clooney wants to join us in India, I am happy to take the phone call and interview him, but right now it seems fine.
India is a market where the agency creative heads have had immense celebrity value. How different is this scenario from the US and UK markets?
This is bit of an unusual market – like Brazil with celebrity talent on the roster. It is one of the markets where it (the celeb quotient) matters. It used to be that way in UK once upon a time, with personalities like BBH’s John Hegarty and Lowe’s founder Frank Lowe. I’m hard pressed to think of a name (like Balki) if you push me to think of in US or even UK.
Mullen Lowe is the only major agency that does not have a global chief creative officer. To have a creative face is often a necessity in a business like advertising and not having one can be challenging?
Agencies have it but we don’t have it. We do not run that model. What we do is run a global creative council that is chaired by Jose Miguel Sokoloff who heads the MullenLowe SSP3 setup in Colombia. He chairs the GCC which brings the top creative talent from across the world thrice a year. The council is a Lowe legacy and it seems to work pretty well for our culture.
You have been talking of the hyper-bundling model and having a single P&L for a while. What gives you the confidence of it working?
The great re-bundling is upon us. 20 years ago for whatever reasons the agencies decoupled creative and media. That does not make sense any longer. Keith Weed of Unilever (our client) says what is most important is to maximise the brand. Not the channel. Our model is based on hyper-bundling where we smash together all practises and go to client with one solution and one P&L. That is it. It is not any more
complicated. Clients do not need 7 agencies on the roster any more, but one single agency who can think of the full brand journey. They just want a single solution. We have already done this in the New York and London - it is one office and one group there.
When are you rolling out the remaining three verticals of the MLG - Profero, Open and MediaHub - in India?
Globally we are running a portfolio strategy and the four practices exist as verticals and are offered as per the client requirement. In India
we are going to inject a significant media practice in a big way by end of this year or early next year.
Balki didn’t believe in entering awards and Lowe has kept away from most awards. Will that change now?
I’m not going to make that decision for these guys, it is a local decision. On a separate note, I think there are too many awards. I tend to like award shows that are for real clients and real work, which is why Effies matter. One of the issues that is discussed around is not just scam awards but one idea entering 17 different categories. I personally do not know how many categories one should enter a single idea.
It is not often that a global CEO of a communication group confesses to their Indian operations being comparable to their US operation on most parameters. That is exactly what Alex Leikikh, worldwide CEO of MullenLowe Group (MLG) shared with Brand Equity on his maiden trip to India recently. The new entity was created nearly an year back after Lowe and Partners network aligned with the US agency, Mullen.
Leikikh shares his plans for the group as he goes about fusing the two different cultures of the Boston-born independent agency with the British origin Lowe.
New York has been the birthplace for a large part of American advertising. In such a scenario being an agency born in Boston, a city more known for its universities and financial clout than creativity, must have posed some unique challenges for the Mullen brand?
Mullen was born in northern suburbs of Boston, in Wenham MA in 1970. In the early days, the joke was that the agency has to be extra special to be able to convince a client to not just travel out of New York, take a 30 minutes flight, and then take a 40-minute drive into the woods to reach our then office. The company grew against all odds. The challenges of the location did give the agency a scrappy street
fighter mentality.
Mullen with its unique independent agency culture and Lowe with its British legacy. What was the genesis of melting the two disparate brands together?
Practically, Mullen had a lot of clients in the US that needed representation outside. Equally Lowe while a big agency in UK, India and other parts never got a foothold in the US, which is not unusual since most UK-based agencies for some reasons have never made it quite big in the US market. It is well documented that IPG has tried it twice earlier too - to take Lowe outside without much success. This is the third time.
India is a unique market for MLG, in that it has two standalone agency brands– the iconic Lowe Lintas and the newer offshoot Mullen Lowe. Why have two brands?
The reason for having two brands here is because unlike US this market has a long tail of clients. It does not have 3-4 massive clients delivering 10-15 million dollars of revenue each contributing to the business. In such a situation we need the second brand to deal with the conflicts that may arise.
Recently the high-profile R Balki group chairman Mullen Lowe Lintas decided to quit after a long stint as the face of the brand in India. What has been the impact on the business?
There are a number of ways of measuring – whether the clients remained stable before, during and after the announcement, do we believe in our talent’s ability to deliver, are we getting inbound calls to participate in business and creative reviews. Answer to all these is yes. We have not felt the downside of Balki’s going and that has also to do with the talent that has been developed at the group. We are obviously
monitoring it - if George Clooney wants to join us in India, I am happy to take the phone call and interview him, but right now it seems fine.
India is a market where the agency creative heads have had immense celebrity value. How different is this scenario from the US and UK markets?
This is bit of an unusual market – like Brazil with celebrity talent on the roster. It is one of the markets where it (the celeb quotient) matters. It used to be that way in UK once upon a time, with personalities like BBH’s John Hegarty and Lowe’s founder Frank Lowe. I’m hard pressed to think of a name (like Balki) if you push me to think of in US or even UK.
Mullen Lowe is the only major agency that does not have a global chief creative officer. To have a creative face is often a necessity in a business like advertising and not having one can be challenging?
Agencies have it but we don’t have it. We do not run that model. What we do is run a global creative council that is chaired by Jose Miguel Sokoloff who heads the MullenLowe SSP3 setup in Colombia. He chairs the GCC which brings the top creative talent from across the world thrice a year. The council is a Lowe legacy and it seems to work pretty well for our culture.
You have been talking of the hyper-bundling model and having a single P&L for a while. What gives you the confidence of it working?
The great re-bundling is upon us. 20 years ago for whatever reasons the agencies decoupled creative and media. That does not make sense any longer. Keith Weed of Unilever (our client) says what is most important is to maximise the brand. Not the channel. Our model is based on hyper-bundling where we smash together all practises and go to client with one solution and one P&L. That is it. It is not any more
complicated. Clients do not need 7 agencies on the roster any more, but one single agency who can think of the full brand journey. They just want a single solution. We have already done this in the New York and London - it is one office and one group there.
When are you rolling out the remaining three verticals of the MLG - Profero, Open and MediaHub - in India?
Globally we are running a portfolio strategy and the four practices exist as verticals and are offered as per the client requirement. In India
we are going to inject a significant media practice in a big way by end of this year or early next year.
Balki didn’t believe in entering awards and Lowe has kept away from most awards. Will that change now?
I’m not going to make that decision for these guys, it is a local decision. On a separate note, I think there are too many awards. I tend to like award shows that are for real clients and real work, which is why Effies matter. One of the issues that is discussed around is not just scam awards but one idea entering 17 different categories. I personally do not know how many categories one should enter a single idea.
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